It’s a great shame when we lose any club, but the Skolars’ decision to step down has to mean a restructuring below SL, but if you do the obvious and combine the championship with L1, how do you produce a fixture list for 23 clubs who require 26 games? One way would be to have each club play the rest once and have 4 extra fixtures with local teams to you, to produce derbies? Another way would be to go back to the days of one division in the whole league ( pre mid 70s) where for instance my club Workington played all the other Cumbrian and Lancs teams home and away, plus 4 Yorkshire or “eastern “ teams to get 34 fixtures. The problem there was that sometimes an eastern team or 2 might be reclassified as western to even up the 2 sides. If that format returned, looking at the teams below SL, would say Keighley and Newcastle be happy about being put into the western half?
Its a bit of a minefield, but something needs to be done, and for certain a L1 of 9 clubs is not sustainable.